


White Water Dreaming

by Merixcil



Category: The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Character Study, Gen, Intentionally OOC, dark!Sam, mentions of Boromir's death, personality trait swap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-14
Updated: 2019-03-14
Packaged: 2019-11-18 05:04:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18113840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merixcil/pseuds/Merixcil
Summary: Sam weighs up his options and plots a course for the rest of his journey





	White Water Dreaming

**Author's Note:**

> So, this was written for a writing challenge in which writers were asked to take a character they love and turn the character trait of theirs that makes us love them on its head
> 
> I picked Sam Gamgee, and I love Sam because of his selfless loyalty
> 
> So this fic is me trying to work out what's left of him if you swap that out for fickle selfishness

And in the woods, stained red and black with death, four hobbits scattered like so many rats at sea, jumping from a sinking ship and praying the current would carry them to land. Though the shade of the canopy cast them in darkness, beyond the leaves the sun shone bright. The skies were always clear when they bid farewell to former ambitions.

This, thought Sam, is the farthest I’ve ever been from home and every step I’ve taken past the borders of the Shire I haven’t much liked. The leaves crackled like fire under his feet as he crept back towards the riverbank. He had never seen the need for moving quietly, save when he used to prune the bushes beneath Mr Frodo’s front window, listening in on private conversations.

The inherited debt, the fondness for summer wine, the tacit refusal to court. Every strike Sam had tucked into his back pocket, ready to throttle his employer should the need arise, seemed hopelessly petty next to the rushing white waters of the Argonath. Sam stopped at the tree line, pulling his cloak tight against him when he saw something moving by the boats.

Orcs probably weren’t smart enough to make head or tail of a boat. Their bloodied teeth and hideous faces, flickering through the trees and surrounding them. Sam pinches his eyes shut and breathed deep. When it came down to it, he would sooner swear fealty to a monster than try to outrun it. With his short legs and over-hungry gut and ever wavering heart, he didn’t have much to offer, but he knew things. More than just the private life of Frodo Baggins. He knew which way the Fellowship headed, he knew its purpose, he knew that Gandalf the Grey was dead.

Some might have called him clever. Truth was, he was a gardener who didn’t know enough to name the flowers blooming amongst the briers this far south.  

“Don’t be a fool! What have you heard, and why did you listen?” The wizard was dead and Sam would not be here if there had been anywhere else to go when they stumbled out of Moria. The figure at the shoreline looked back over its shoulder towards the forest but its eyes didn’t fall on Sam. Curly brown hair, white skin. Sam already knew those eyes were sad.

But for a moment, he felt the same sadness. Together, he and Frodo were thinking of strawberries and cream, of New Year’s Eve at the Dancing Dragon, of the bees in the apple trees at the bottom of Bag End garden. They had that much in common.

Frodo’s bare feet dug deep into the ground as he locked his shoulder into the hull of a boat and heaved it into the shallows. He threw his pack in, and then himself. Just tall enough to peer out over the side into the waters below.

The command had been simple and direct, delivered with enough force that Sam had no need to doubt that the wizard was as terrible as anything they might meet on the road. “You shall go away with Mr Frodo!” And away he had gone, left with barely a second thought so keen was he not to bear witness to the culmination of a wizard’s rage. Beyond the agreed destination and the reaches of the stories his gaffer would tell him when he was a sprog, knowing that if he turned tail he would catch a pair of grey eyes promising certain peril.

Go away with Mr Frodo. Go Away. The river was loud and the forest was alive. Sam didn’t have the ears of en elf or the experience of a ranger, just the insubstantial knowledge of a gardener from the Shire. So he planted his feet as best he could and tried to pretend he was home.

Not home yet, but on the way. Turning around, checking his compass. There would be no mines or mountains on the way back. He might not even stop at Rivendell. Merry and Pippin wouldn’t follow; Aragorn had hypnotised the lot of them with his unswerving commitment to their mission.

The boat reached the middle of the river where the current caught it and Frodo had to scramble for the oar to keep his course straight. Alone and helpless. It would be a long road to Mordor. All the while dreaming of his little hole under the hill, just as Sam was dreaming.

Frodo would understand, even if Gandalf couldn’t.

Before he grew too small to see, Frodo started, looking up and back towards the bank and though the distance between the two of them was small enough to breach, his eyes locked with Sam’s.

Not everything was as awful as a wizard’s curse, just more direct. Before Sam could decide to drop his cloak, to raise a hand and wave farewell to a piece of home that would never make it back upstream, the boat rounded a bend in the river and was lost to him.

Deep breaths, Samwise. He was just your boss. Bloody foolish of you to have followed him this far if you’re asking me.

And the blood in the water, leaking from the orcs discarded in the river by the Fellowship and their own kind alike. The forest broke and shuddered around him, and down through the trees came Boromir’s body, born aloft by Aragorn and Legolas while Gimli made for an unimpressive funeral procession. They didn’t have long. The body needed to be disposed of quickly before the smell of a man’s lifeblood attracted more orcs.

“Sam!” Legolas tried to smile as he stepped forward. “Thank goodness. Where are the others?”

No Merry, no Pippin. The river was too loud to hear the stampeding army rushing away from this place but Sam knew they were as good as dead. Merry, who’s smile was the Brandywine River and adventure waiting to happen. Pippin, who was freshly scrumped apples and one more thing to say than he ever ought to. They should have been here, they should have been with Frodo, sailing down the river hand in hand. They would have been good for it, and Frodo would have liked the reminder that he was fighting for something that looked like home.

Sam shook his head. “Don’t know.” He looked from Boromir’s body, now lying in the bottom of a boat, to the blood on Legolas’s fingers where his bowstring had sliced the flesh. “I’m going home.”

“Home?” Legolas blinked, Gimli growled. Aragorn barely looked up, his eyes cloudy as he arranged Boromir into a shape that looked less like violent death.

“Well I have no plans to die for the sake of you lot.” Sam snapped. He turned back to the trees and started off the way they had come, the roar of the river loud in his ears.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are love! Come find me on [tumblr](http://jeffersonhairpie.tumblr.com) and [twitter](https://twitter.com/chadfuture_)


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